All abandoned: Chernobyl / Pripyat, Nara Dreamland, Anti-Zombie Fortress, Japanese Sex Museum – and many, many more! Plus: North Korea Special – 2 trips, 16 days / 14 nights! As seen on CNN…

7/31 – A Day To Mourn?

As much as I love Japan, there is one serious aspect about my adopted home that really disgusts me: Japan loves to disguise its role in WW2, often even portraits itself as one of the victims, continuously downplaying the committed atrocities. In August the self-pity reaches the all-year height on the occasion of the nuclear incidents – which is really sad, especially since July 31st would be a perfect day to show some remorse.
Unfortunately “July 31st” isn’t a thing – neither in Japan, nor anywhere else. Last year I used the date for a little rant about this topic on *Facebook*, but that’s it. Why July 31st? Because of Unit 731, one of Japan’s darkest chapters. To quote *Wikipedia*: “Unit 731 was a covert biological and chemical warfare research and development unit of the Imperial Japanese Army that undertook lethal human experimentation during the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945) of World War II.”

Being from Germany myself, I grew up in a society that quite openly dealt with the darkest chapter of its history, but also with its attempts to make up for it – not just by paying reparations, but also by showing regret and remorse (*Warsaw Genuflection*) and by being a driving force behind organisations like the European Union. Japan on the other hand were trumping Asia before Donald J. Trump was even born – making half-ass excuses or even apologies, only to taking them back soon after. Japanese history school books tend to be a joke, barely dealing with the 1930s and 40s. As a result Japanese old men grunt “brassas in aams” when they find out that I am German (which is wrong in many ways…), more people seem to know Josef Mengele than Ishii Shiro (which is a shame!), and Japan still has conflicts with Russia, China, Taiwan, both Koreas and probably even more countries over topics that date back 75 years or more and should have been resolved generations ago!
I really love Japan, but the country desparately needs a day for sincere remorse – and what better day than July 31st?!

Thanks for not forgetting this Florian – and for reminding all of us each year. God willing let’s never repeat another Unit 731, etc. Remembering is a good thing and you are right that Germany has handled this much better.

Thanks – it’s actually a difficult problem to bring up. As expected, people were mentioning Hiroshima on FB in my private feed yesterday – no one ever brings up the victims of Imperial Japan… (Interestingly enough, all the people mentioning Hiroshima in my feed were other foreigners.)

A former adult student of mine and I used to talk about differences in thinking between Europeans and Japanese, and it often occurred to me that Japan is a kind of unique experiment where people were left on an isolated archipelago and interacted very little with people in other lands. Unlike Britain, which was repeatedly invaded and had new language, culture, laws, and technology brought to it, Japan only had periodic interaction with its neighbours with two failed invasions from the Mongolians and short-lived attempt to annex Korea under Toyotomi Hideyoshi. As a result, Japanese people have for a long time felt that Japan and the rest of the world are two different worlds. The wars against China and Russia were mostly an effort to assert Japan’s position on the western side. Basically, Japanese thinking is like a turtle: stick your head out and move around when it’s reasonable to do so, otherwise hide in your shell.

This thinking, whether conscious or subconscious, has left the modern generation in a lot of trouble because as China and Korea continue to hold grudges for all the crimes and atrocities of the past, the old generation can’t understand why the topic can’t be left along and the young generation don’t really know why China and Korea continue to hate Japan.

In the case of Germany, the country was founded upon several tribes of peoples, each of whom had interacted with their neighbours either as friends or enemies. As such, Germany was a combined force of different peoples and had direct connections to its neighbours and first hand experienced victory and loss and the repercussions of the latter. Therefore, Germans knew that they had to pay concessions and prove to their neighbours that Germany was sorry for what had been done and would be certain to never let that happen again. For Japan, it was more practical to slink back to its island, put its head down, and work toward building the country back up.

That’s just my impression of why Germany could take responsibility for its war crimes but Japan has always tried to play it down or shirk it off. Maybe not the best words but I hope the notion is understood.

I think you are making very good points, but in the end it’s just an explanation why Japan acts like that… not a good reason to do so. IMHO Japan is making a big mistake behaving like this, and the country and its neighbors will suffer from it long-term. But maybe not. Who knows? I’m just fed up with the hypocrisy here, which seems to be a society problem in general. (Don’t get me started about ACs for example… Why is it okay to heat buildings in winter to 28°C, but you are considered the devil if you “waste energy” by setting the AC to 25°C in summer? Not to mentions all the illuminations everywhere…)

Oh, yes. For sure it was just an explanation as a possible why. As for ACs, how about all the idling vehicles in parking lots in summer because they need the AC on. Oh, yes, climate change is a serious issue but I’m going to sit in my car for twenty minutes with the AC running. Some people even leave their engines on while the stop in the supermarket just so the car will be cool when they come back! Oh, yeah, you guys care a whole lot.